


I Get High

by Unchained_Daisychain



Category: Bob Dylan (Musician), The Beatles (Band)
Genre: America, Canon Compliant, M/M, Marijuana, One Shot, Recreational Drug Use, mclennon as viewed from an outsider, rainy day women #12 & 35 plays in the distance, this is from bob's pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:28:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22135552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unchained_Daisychain/pseuds/Unchained_Daisychain
Summary: On August 28, 1964, The Beatles were introduced to Bob Dylan...and marijuana-The Beatles. That’s who is causing so much pandemonium in the streets that they’ve been confined to their rooms. That’s who has America foaming at the mouth and pissing their pants with excitement. And that’s who their mutual journalist friend Al Aronowitz said is waiting to meet him at the Delmonico.
Relationships: John Lennon & Paul McCartney, John Lennon/Paul McCartney
Comments: 19
Kudos: 92





	I Get High

**Author's Note:**

> this isn't really anything grand and I'm not sure if I like how it turned out, but I love bob Dylan and I love The Beatles, and knowing they first blazed up w him is too good of a story not to attempt. mclennon is analyzed through the lens of bob dylan here.
> 
> happy reading!
> 
> (holy shit this is actually being posted a few mins after 4:20 I didn't even mean to do that)

The car nudges through the bustling streets of New York City while Bob pulls leisurely on a smoke in the back and watches it all pass by. From the traffic alone he can glean the impact this group has had on their country already. Impatient car horns eventually become shrill screams the closer they get to the hotel, where stiff-faced guards fend off a horde of ecstatic fans. A tumult raucous enough to make you think the President himself was in town, not some mop-topped, four-headed hydra from Liverpool. 

Bob shakes his head, laughing to himself.

The Beatles. That’s who is causing so much pandemonium in the streets that they’ve been confined to their rooms. That’s who has America foaming at the mouth and pissing their pants with excitement. And that’s who their mutual journalist friend Al Aronowitz said is waiting to meet him at the Delmonico. 

“You think it’s the songs or the wigs?” 

From the front seat Al turns his head, eyeing him sidelong. “What’s that?”

“All these cats losing their minds,” Bob clarifies, gaze staying fixed on the idly moving scenery. He turns a few stunned heads of his own, as he does little to shield himself from the faces crowding the window. “Is it the songs or the wigs doin’ it?”

“It’s their songs just like it’s your songs, man.” Al smirks around his cigarette, adding, “Don’t think it’d hurt ya any to throw on a wig, though.”

“No, I might go the other route. Just go bald.”

“Hell, go electric, too, while you’re at it.”

Bob chuckles at the thought. His cult-like folk following would turn on him like a pack of wolves. 

“Lennon and McCartney, huh?” he muses aloud. “They’re the big hit writers.”

The Smart One and The Cute One. Wasn’t that what the tabloids dubbed them? When he first heard their tune on the radio—an innocent number about holding hands—he was so astounded by their sound he’d wished there was a way to run the track back right then. They had something different about them, the music a hand twisted in your collar and the lyrics the fist that delivered the punch. And it wasn’t just the one punch either. A hatful of chart-topping songs those four already had out, each one pricking his ears like a dog’s at what they heard. They had something special, and as of right now they had the entire world eating from the palm of their hands.

Bob can’t wait to drill into the minds of the songwriting duo. Figure out what it is fueling all those tender words of love. 

“They’re real good,” Al goes on, reeling him back into the conversation. “Real genuine guys, man, all of ‘em. You’ll dig ‘em. They’re a lot like you in a way.”

Bob smiles and pushes his sunglasses over his eyes as they approach the back entrance of the hotel. “I hate them already.”

With the Delmonico as swarmed with people inside as it is outside, the shuffle to the Beatles’ suite takes some effort. Reporters lingering in the lobby for an interview with the band are now eager to snag a word from Dylan as well—this miraculous chance of two big names in one New York hotel making them cream their sleazy, journalistic shorts. But he keeps his nose on the ground and makes no stops until his feet reach the door of their suite.

After a few seconds, a gentleman in a smart suit opens the door.

The businesslike line of his mouth curves into a genuine smile in a flash. And, at a glance, it’s the only thing about the man that’s wrinkled and misshapen. Not a single hair out of place on his head, nor even a speck of lint on his clothes. The delegatory air of a manager if he’s ever seen one. Then a hand is reaching across the threshold and ushering Bob in as it firmly shakes his own.

“Mr. Dylan, a pleasure,” the man says, voice warm like honey. “I’m Brian, The Beatles’ manager.”

“Mr. Dylan’s my mother,” he teases with a small smile. “Call me Bob.”

“Well, Bob, the boys are rather keen to meet you. Very big fans of yours, they are.”

He scopes out the sizable shared lounge of their suite to see where exactly these fans are. Initially he spots the various articles of clothing strewn around the room. A suit jacket tossed over a couch, a tie draped over the back of a desk chair, several pairs of shoes haphazardly left on the floor. Around the mess he sees two of the four band members lounging on the couch while the TV drones on in the background. Their necks simultaneously turn at the mention of him, always in rhythm, and both of them join the introductions by the door.

The shorter of the two, Bob’s height and with oceanic blue eyes much like his own, he knows to be the drummer. Ringo, as if the glinting hand that shakes his own weren’t a dead giveaway. Standing next to him is George Harrison, all high cheekbones and bushy eyebrows and dark in a way that only further casts him in that shadow of The Quiet One. 

Bob points between them. “Two of you’s missing.”

“No, they’ve just been cloning themselves this whole time,” Al teases with a nudge to his elbow.

Ringo nods. “We’re martians, didn’t you know?”

Walking over to one of the rooms and pounding on the closed door, George shouts, “Oi, Dyaln’s here!”

_Yeah, The Quiet One my ass._ He always fucking hated labels.

“Bobby’s here?!” he hears from the other side of the door.

“Yeah, and he’s dyin’ for a drink!” he shouts back with a grin, feeling the tension in his neck loosen at all this easy banter. 

The manager turns to him, hospitably offering, “If you fancy a drink, we could get you something.”

“Got any cheap wine?”

“I’m afraid we only have champagne.”.

Bob scrunches his nose. “Champagne don’t go with grass. Gotta be cheap wine.”

“Mal,” he calls to a burly man watching TV from an armchair, “could you see about getting our guest some cheap wine?”

“What d’you mean grass?” George asks.

Finally Paul McCartney emerges from the dark room, tucking in his shirt, with guitarist John Lennon following behind a few seconds after. At the sight of them, Bob nearly forgets the question. Somehow charming the room just by entering it, Paul has a face more fit for a magazine (and some cruel teasing) than any rock-‘n’-roll band, unlike his counterpart. Lennon, with the hard squint of his eyes and ruggedly handsome features of his face, personifies the very spirit of rebellion. 

Both of their moptops are disheveled and their cheeks are dusted pink, but Bob knows all too well coming off a stage has that effect on musicians. Their bright eyes make him feel even more welcome than Mr. Epstein’s hospitality.

“Well…pot, man,” he laughs with a hint of confusion. “Marijuana.”

“We’ve never really had that before,” Paul falls into the conversation seamlessly, one of his slender, girlish eyebrows raised. 

Bob chuckles until he realizes they aren’t joking. “What?”

“Yeah, only uppers, you know.”

“But—wait, then what about that song? The one about getting high?”

“Which song?” John asks.

“You know, the one that goes, _when I touch you…I get high, I get high.”_

A look passes over his face as he looks at Paul, his partner on the piece. And he almost seems embarrassed, shy smiles passing between them. Little by little the pieces of his bravado are chipping away until Bob feels he had the man pegged entirely wrong in the beginning. 

“Those aren’t the lyrics, mate,” he says. “It’s _I can’t hide, I can’t hide, I can’t hide.”_

“No way!” Bob says with an incredulous laugh. “Shit, I—I thought for sure those were the words.”

George snorts. “Were you smokin’ anything when you heard it?”

“Only purple hearts for us,” Ringo says. “We’re a classy lot, Bob.”

“Fancy any of those?” Paul offers, leaning in with those distracting, doe-like eyes calling to him like a voice at the bottom of a well.

He shakes his head. “I’ll stick to my pot… _and_ my version of the song.”

They all laugh, and Bob loves how easily they all get on with each other so far. Initially he had feared they’d have nothing in common, coming from two different worlds with an ocean between them. But music has always been a safety net, and now he knows the perfect way to keep the good times rolling.

“So how ‘bout we light this thing up till the wine gets here,” he suggests with a smirk and the joint held like a peace pipe between his spindly fingers. 

* * *

As it turns out, all of them are intrigued but understandably reluctant because of the police officers stationed all around the hotel and the wait staff buzzing in and out of their suite. But with their help, Bob holes them up even more by relocating everyone to a back bedroom and shoving the plush hotel towels under the crack of the door to mask the smell. 

“So this is where the magic happens, huh?” he asks, gaze ambling around the bedroom. Only one of the beds unmade and the other more blanketed by lyric papers than the hotel’s sheets.

John’s face drops at his question. “What?” 

“The songwriting. This is where it gets done on tour?”

Bob can practically see the man’s heart rate regulate, relief teeming over him. 

“Oh, right, right.”

“What’d you think I meant?” he asks with a light chuckle.

A smirk plays at John’s lips, and even in the brief time he’s known the man, he knows anything could fly out of his mouth. And, of course, it does: “Me shagging the bassist.”

Paul shoots him a glare, but the force of his own laughter has Bob doubling over, clutching his side. That explains the one unmade bed, then. Admittedly engaging in a secret love affair under the guise of songwriting is a clever way to go about it. He can already hear the tweens’ hearts breaking over two of The Beatles being taken off the market, all because they’re screwing _each other._

“Can we just get on with it?” the bassist murmurs, uncharacteristically flustered.

So they all gather around like naughty schoolboys while Bob lights the spliff. When he passes it to Ringo, he doesn’t keep the rotation going as is the expected custom. Instead, the drummer takes a long pull, and another and another and smokes the entire thing while Bob and Al merely watch in amusement.

“What?” Ringo asks when the roach is too small to finish.

“You were supposed to pass it around, man.”

“Was I?” he laughs, somewhat self-conscious. “Well, it’s on you to tell us the pot-smoking etiquette.”

Smiling, Bob waves him off as he begins to roll another. “Nah, don’t sweat it.”

He doesn’t usually roll his own, never could get it as tight and neat as the people who do it for him. And with a little bit of a buzz already in his system from that first hit, his fingers are even clumsier than usual. Regardless, he readies them all a new one and preliminarily instructs, “Now this time take a drag and pass it on.”

Understanding the rhythm now, they all have the puff-puff-pass system running smoothly. But when the joint makes its way to Paul, Bob doesn’t miss the look he gives John. Eyebrow slightly lifted, questioning as though maybe he needs approval or reassurance, but his lips curled into a smirk like he knows what the answer will be anyway. His plump lips lock around the white cigarette as he keeps his eyes locked on the guitarist. Bob feels like he’s intruding upon something intimate, personal. Something as thick and heady as the smoke curtaining the air. And he averts his gaze as the joint moves one person closer to himself.

It makes him reconsider Paul’s reaction to John’s earlier teasing.

“I don’t feel any different,” George says, thankfully distracting him. “See, this happened last time we tried it in Hamburg.”

“Then what they gave you in Hamburg was cheap shit,” Al answers with a pat on his back. “You’ll be laughin’ your asses off before you know it. Just let it settle.”

Proving his point, Ringo starts to giggle at that news as though it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard. Bob can’t help but laugh himself as he watches his blue eyes glisten like oceans in the sun. He thinks the pot is finally starting to grab hold of everyone now, postures slackening and eyes hooding whether they know it or not. His vision has taken a step back, looking at everyone from the eyepiece of a telescope.

“Feelin’ it now, huh?” he asks with a lazy smile.

All Ringo can do is nod, too wrapped up in his own amusement to even string a sentence together. John’s eyes narrow as he watches, a knife’s edge slicing through the smoke. 

“Well he had the fuckin’ most of it. Let’s see it,” he says, then shoves greedy fingers into the middle of their huddle, disrupting its flow as he plucks the joint from Brian. 

He tokes long and hard, and the tip of the cigarette crackles like firewood. After holding it in for an impressive couple of seconds, the smoke slowly trickles from his thin lips. The joint moves in the opposite direction now, fingers lingering on McCartney’s when he takes it from him. 

Bob shakes his head and laughs. “You’re in for a real treat, man.”

* * *

The Beatles and their manager and roadies are high off their asses, and Bob Dylan, pleasantly stoned himself, sits back to bask in this new type of Beatlemania he has created like a king on a throne. Where smoke once coated the air, laughter now takes its place. 

Snickering to themselves and staggering on their feet like tranquilized apes, they had exited the room with their eyes tellingly half-mast and reddened. Even the meticulously put-together and articulate Mr. Epstein has loosened up, hysterically laughing at the “Jew” that stares back at him in the mirror. Bob finds these bouts of self-loathing to be equal parts humorous and saddening. He never wants to experience the sort of pain that accompanies so easily degrading his own reflection in a crowded room of people.

Aside from Brian’s occasional self-criticisms, McCartney is quite an outlier himself.

While everyone else is overcome with senseless giggles, the handsome bassist has experienced some sort of transcendental breakthrough that has him flitting around the room like a restless bird. Ceaselessly asking for a pencil to jot down his revelation about the meaning of life and its seven levels. His urgency is fascinating to behold, so unlike every other mellowed and limp-limbed body in the living room. 

From one of the couches, Bob tells him, “Last year I recorded a song called ‘Seven Curses’. I think you’re stealin’ my shit, man.”

Having been staring at the ceiling for an immeasurable length of time, John finally looks at him from the opposite armchair. In that strong Scouse accent that has Bob cracking up much more now, he says, “He could write you under the table.”

“You think so?”

The confidence in his eyes is unwavering. “I know so.”

Bob is too far gone to take offense to his words, and anyway John’s attention has been stolen by his bandmate still skirting around the room. He watches John as John watches Paul. Feels, for some reason, as though he’s suddenly become a third-wheel in this crowded room. An intruder like he was in that fleeting moment of uncertainty before Paul took his first toke. 

Marijuana doesn’t induce the type of serenity softening John’s expression. Something as tangible and weighty as buckets of rain. Only one drug does that, and it can’t be rolled into a cigarette. But Bob isn’t one to jump to conclusions.

“Ain’t that right, love?” John asks Paul, as though he possibly heard any of the conversation.

Still too preoccupied with rifling through the hotel’s stationary, he says, “Mal. Mal, have you got a pen?”

John groans. “Macca, give it a rest, will ya?”

“No,” he protests adamantly, “I need to write this down. This is, y’know, this is big.”

“To hell with his bloody pencil, can we get some room service in ‘ere?” George asks, with the hotel’s menu in his hands. 

“I’ve got two pencils for ‘im right here,” John teases with both of them poking out from his upper lip like walrus tusks. 

Paul doubles over laughing with his hands braced on his knees. With a hand wiping his eyes, he stumbles over to John and tries to snatch the yellow tusks from his mouth. But he turns into the couch, shielding them with his body, and Paul climbs on top of him.

“John, I need one!” he demands.

He shouts when fingers prod his ribs, and fends off Paul’s hand with the eraser jabbing him like a sword. “Go find your own!”

With fumbling yet determined movements they wrestle like two toddlers, one mass of shaggy hair and wrinkled suits. Exactly like the way he first met them. Their hands land on each other with familiarity and confidence, as though they’ve done this a hundred times before. Not an ounce of hesitation between their bodies. 

Suddenly the phone on the coffee table rings, and Bob nearly jumps. He looks around, at the tussling songwriters and the absent band manager and the snoozing roadies. The only one paying it any mind, he picks it up with a mischievous curl of his mouth.

“This is Beatlemania here!” he answers, eyes never straying from all the lunacy happening in this hotel suite, right under hundreds of fans’ noses. “The band is feeling a little _green_ right now, but could I take a message?”

* * *

In the end, Bob has to settle for the drinks they have on hand rather than his preferred cheap wine. But he forgot he even requested that. With the record player spinning Muddy Waters to suit their mellow laze, they all sip on scotch and Cokes while listening to the music that feels in and of itself like a cool drink on the rocks for their souls.

At least, that’s what Bob is trying to get John to understand, but the man has sank into his high as though it’s a soft-cushioned couch. No matter how much Bob wants him to listen— _really_ listen—John can’t be bothered with unearthing meaning from the music in his current state.

“Hey, John, listen to the lyrics, man!” 

“Fuck the lyrics. You listen to the blues with your soul, not your ears,” he argues, eyes and hair and Scotch all the same shade of light brown now. “I’m fucking _stoned,_ mate. And you know we don’t believe that shit we write anyway. S’just about the rhythm, what sounds good.”

“That why your songs are all sound and no heart?” he presses, always one to provoke and seek answers. “You really don’t believe in all that love you write about?”

John’s eyes shift around the room, but Bob doesn’t turn around to see what he’s searching for. It’s a moment of privacy he doesn’t even know he’s being granted. He knows if he turns to find the answer to John’s question before he even speaks it, this moment will crumble like paper. 

“I believe in love,” he finally says, quieter now. “That’s not what I’m saying.”

“Well, what are you saying?”

“I believe in love, just not the way it’s written.”

Bob nods in consideration. “How is love supposed to be written?”

“It’s more than roses and sweets and holding hands,” John answers with a note of frustration. Like maybe he’s had this same argument with himself time and time again but never found a solution. “We all make it too simple, is the thing.”

“So it’s more complicated than that?”

He scoffs and finally sets his eyes back on Bob. “Extremely.”

“You could go deeper. You can always go deeper.”

John smirks around the lip of his glass, murmuring into the ice and amber, “Funny phrasing there, Bobby.”

He laughs, but it dies quickly because he’s learned you can only keep Lennon in your clutches for so long. And this—this feels important for some reason. Like McCartney’s revelation, he feels on the verge of something big. An intruder, maybe; but no stranger to the untouched potential thrumming between these two and this room.

“I’m serious, man,” he tries again, hoping John doesn’t shut him down on this. “With music you can have your cake and eat it too. You know, have your rhythm if you want it, but don’t knock the words either, man.”

Bob doesn’t know why he’s pushing so hard for this. Why should he care how another artist strings their words together to express their feelings? He should be edging out the competition, not advising it. But the thing is, he doesn’t really give a fuck about competition. He gives a fuck about music—and _good_ music. Lennon is more clever than he may let on, and if he formed into words the gleam that sparkled in his eye when he gazes at his bandmate, the world would come face to face with some of the best songs it’s ever known.

John sighs, then leans forward with his sharp eyes. “How about this: I’ll work on my lyrics if you work on your rhythm.”

“What’s wrong with my rhythm?” he asks with a frown.

John smiles slyly, like he can smell the hypocrisy just as well as Bob can taste it. “Same thing that’s wrong with my lyrics. Only so many ways to sing about love and only so many sounds to play on an acoustic.”

A grin stretches like taffy across his lips. And if that’s as far as he can get with the man, then he’ll take it. He feels like he at last has found an apt competitor in these battles of wits and verbal chess matches. Like he eventually chipped a piece off of that stubborn shell and possibly got _somewhere._

Wagging his finger at him, he laughs, “Man, I dig you!”

“I dig you too, Bobby.” Rising with much effort from the armchair, John pats him on the shoulder as he passes. “And those funny fags of yours.”

“Phrasing, John!” Bob calls after him with a grin. 

His eyes lazily follow as the man eases beside Paul at the minibar and places a hand on the center of his back while he pours a drink. They speak close and hushed with one another, soft smiles the only sign of a punctuated thought. Already he can practically see the unwritten lyrics suspended in the air between them, waiting to be plucked down and married with music.

“You got anymore of that you could leave with us?”

Pulled from his musings, Bob turns to see George leaning over the couch with his forearms braced on top of it. In his hand are a few limp and greasy french fries. Bob doesn’t even remember room service coming in, and he certainly didn’t get his share of any food. 

“Huh?” he asks, stealing one of the fries.

“You got anymore marijuana we could keep?”

Bob chuckles at how casual and curious he sounds. “You dug it, did you?”

“Yeah, it’s gear.” George’s sharp canines split his smile in half. “Better than anything we’ve had.”

“Sure, I’ll leave you some,” Bob says, more than happy to give the boys a way to entertain themselves during their confinement. “Hey, how’s Ringo doin’?”

With a smirk George steps aside and says, “See for yourself.”

Bob peers over the back of the couch to see Ringo slumped against it with an empty bottle of Scotch planted in his hands and Bob’s own sunglasses shoved over his eyes. Shit, he never expected to knock everyone on their asses. 

Laughing, he says, “That’ll be the best sleep he’s ever had, I guarantee it. How long has he been there?”

“I got no idea,” he answers with a shrug. “Think we’ll have to start callin’ ‘im Ringo Stoned now, though.”

“Ringo Stoned and The Reefers.” 

In the corner of his eye, Bob notices Lennon and McCartney duck into their room. The door gently closes behind them and shuts them off into a world of their own as though they aren’t already in one any given second they’re together. He’s never seen a partnership like theirs. Two people entangled in a dance to which only they know the moves, and one he doesn’t even care to learn because merely observing it is captivating enough. 

For all he knows, they could be sneaking away for another secretive smoke that they won’t have to split between eight others. Or maybe inspiration has struck and they want to wrangle every lyric that comes to mind even though they’ll piss themselves laughing the next morning at some of the nonsense on the page. Bob decides it must be one of those and intentionally ignores the way John had stared at Paul. Like Paul was the only one in the room—like he was the architect who built the entire thing around both of them. 

There’s no telling if John will heed his advice on songwriting. But if he does, if the songs start to capture and articulate those intricate steps in the dance, Bob will be sure to keep his end of the deal as well.

Closing his eyes, he lies back on the couch with a smile. For once correctly humming to himself, _It’s such a feeling that my love, I can’t hide._

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed this until I post smth for the sudden Thigh Movement™ happening on my [tumblr](https://unchaineddaisychain.tumblr.com). comments are appreciated! <3


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